I think Apple has the same problems with iPads. True, I did buy a new M1 iPad Pro two years ago and I love it (16G memory, 1TB “disk”), but when I travel like I am doing now I travel with an almost five year old small iPad Pro - this old piece of hardware really does most of what I need, including light duty programming on a VPS via mosh/ssh.
Come to think of it, my Apple Watch is about five years old and still does everything I need.
Apple is transitioning to a partially services company, which is a good move. Apple gets about $45/month from my family.
EDIT: I also usually get at least four years service from Mac laptops, and even longer for two really old ones that run Linux.
I'm with you in that there's no compelling reason to upgrade my iPad Pro because it just works. Having said that, I'm mulling over a mini, studio or macbook pro for a development system, but not the air. Why not the air? For reasons unclear to me Apple only includes Wifi 6e support on the Pro devices and not the latest Air. That's also currently true on the ipad line: only the pro devices speak 6e as well. Does it really matter on the ipad? Perhaps not, but in my area wifi pollution is so rampant, the devices I most rely upon (cell phone, windows laptop) speak 6e because it's the only way to get decent transfer rates.
In fact I nearly purchased a macbook but decided to roll the device on an upgrade instead first because it was so cheap to do so. This would never happen with an apple device - my six year old windows laptop's upgrade to 6/6e was a $25 part purchased on Amazon and replaced on the motherboard in a matter of minutes. That's the other reason I'm not really dying to buy an apple device, no matter how portable or how great battery life is: it's a wasting asset that is designed to be unrepairable, much less upgradeable. And although it can be handy to do development locally, mosh/ssh and guacamole make it so there's no compelling reason to upgrade my six year old laptop either.
While I grant you the upgradability argument. From a practical perspective, I see iPhones and MacBooks being used for a way longer time than windows laptops or android phones. Part of that is being more expensive but I don't think that is the whole story. I suspect the M1/M2 will prolong the lifespan of the MacBook even more.
I really hope your last sentence is true. I've been running a Macbook Air M1 for awhile now and it feels just as snappy as the day I got it. In 15 years and numerous machines (intel macbooks, lenovos, dells, HPs, etc) , I've never been able to say that about any of them. However, the unfortunate part is, while I believe the hardware will be able to last awhile, it all comes down to the what the business heads at Apple see as the EOL day for supporting newer versions of macOS on it.
Yeah, especially iPads for kids - if one day the newest version of Minecraft required a new iPad, I'd be buying three new iPads. But it doesn't, it works fine, and for the kids I'm even less likely to buy a new device just because it's faster and has more space and a better camera etc etc.
>my Apple Watch is about five years old and still does everything I need.
Have you replaced the battery on the watch? I ask because it seems to me I get maybe 2-3 years per watch before the battery life begins to noticeably degrade.
I still use an iPad Air 2 (from 2014) and every year I look at the new iPad coming out, think about upgrading, and just don't see a point. It's stuck on iOS 15 so I might finally be forced to upgrade to a device because of that eventually, but otherwise it does a perfectly adequate job of everything I want out of an iPad nearly 9 years later.
> Apple is transitioning to a partially services company, which is a good move.
Disagree. Currently, between Android and iOS, Apple is the less-worse option. If they went heavily into subscriptions, that would make them a less compelling choice.
To be entirely fair, this is not just a macbook think and mostly a computer thing.
My 4 years old work windows laptop is a dell xp13 with an i7-8something cpu and is more than enough for anyone who was ok with that laptop when it came out.
Which is not to say the m2 isn't awesome, but since bazillion core cpu and nvme drives became commonplace there isn't much beside very heavy usage (gaming, ia, ... anything that require a top level gpu) that can stop an "old" computer, even a laptop.
That's what I've found as well. Only bothered to update my 10yo computer during 2020 work from home because I wanted to play around with some new stuff, had a bit of disposable income since I wasn't going anywhere, and it had been long enough that the performance jump would be nice in games/playing with graphics rendering stuff.
But I easily could've kept using it for another several years for all but the most demanding software and it was an i7-3770k/16gb/GTX980/various SSDs/HDDs.
Still, I understand that the form factor meant that portability wasn't an issue. The difference between a 10yo laptop and a modern one would've been much, much more noticeable.
10-12 years ago was a sea change for laptops. On the Apple side, the "Retina" MacBook pro was a drastic improvement over its predecessors because of the display as well as the fast flash storage, while preserving a thin(ish) form factor.
Unfortunately Apple followed up with some missteps like the awful "butterfly" keyboard, and the unpopular touch bar which initially removed a physical ESC key.
> I think out of all companies, Apple has generally been the best (though not perfect) at maintaining focus even when a product is "good enough".
I don't quite agree. Switching from USB-C back to magsafe feels like a downgrade, and it makes no sense at all to provide only 2 USB-C ports on the left side when some models not only provided a pair on each side but also they could all be used to charge the laptop.
Insisting on 8GB of RAM is also completely unjustified, specially as some miniPCs that ship with more RAM are sold for less than the cost of upgrading RAM on any laptop from the MacBook line.
You can still use those USB-C ports to charge the laptop if you want. The MagSafe port is just there in case you want to charge it very quickly, or use their custom cable that will help reduce the probability of the device accidentally being ripped off the table and dashed on the floor, if you should happen to trip over the cable.
I welcome the new MagSafe cable. IMO, they should never have gotten rid of it in the first place.
LLMs (large language models) running locally in privacy are the next killer app. Mac Studio can already run 180b models that compete with Gpt-3.5, 2-3 more generations and MacBook airs will be able to run locally. Apple is already deploying smaller LLMs to macOS. This will drive the next hardware cycle
Benchmarks don't necessarily reflect real-world performance. Especially given that they poorly measure more esoteric aspects of the model that, for now, can only be judged qualitatively. I would wait for a bit to see what the community comes up with before writing off Falcon-180B.
I've only dabbled in development in xcode a little. Most of my programming on my M1 are C and Rust programs. But the tooling for apple apps (macOS, iOS, etc) in xcode make it pretty easy with Core ML to make some models and bundle it into your app to run locally on the device it gets installed on. At least that is my understanding on playing with it (someone with more experience with CoreML correct me if I am wrong on that). So its not just Apple themselves, but they make it easier for developers to do it also.
Their improvements to the keyboard auto-correction features is coming to their new software as an on-device LLM. Basically, it looks like they're improving the neural engines on their chips, over time, to start running more LLMs on-device to ensure user data privacy.
This year we have seen consumer prices for RAM hit 64GB (2x32GB) for less than $100.
I wouldn’t extrapolate memory price trends for the next 10 years because we are getting into weird territory but from the perspective of product design it’s an enticing prospect.
It's nice, but my Skylake laptop from 2016 also has pretty good llama.cpp acceleration. It might not drive the next hardware cycle as much as memory and storage constraints will.
The big change I'd like to see in the MacBook Air line is the return of the 11" option; I realize that's too small for a lot of people but for me it was the perfect carry-everywhere form factor for a laptop. (Of course, I also found the iPhone mini line perfect-sized and that got dropped, so I'm probably an outlier)
That's interesting. After trying a 13" macbook myself, I sized back up to a 16" and personally wont be going back.
There is only a marginal difference in my backpack, I don't really notice it. But every time I was using the smaller device I was getting annoyed with the small screen and cramped keyboard/trackpad setup.
This is me, still clinging to my 2015 11” Air. My biggest gripe is I miss the screen ratio. 16:9 is so much more aesthetically pleasing and functional to me than the 16:10 ratio of the new models. That 1 unit makes a world of difference to me.
Different strokes for different folks. I despise the 16:9 ratio and glad it's finally phasing out, if just a little bit. I read a lot of text, so that extra vertical unit is huge for me.
According to Newegg, you can buy a 16GB RAM kit for $32 *total*. A $200 upgrade should be getting you 64GB+ and base models should really have a minimum of 16GB.
I'm not sure this is a fair comparison. The M2 was manufactured using the considerably more expensive N5P technology node. The 28nm cpu in the rasperry pi 4 was designed using a value node specifically to drive down price / transistor. EUV lithography is extraordinarily expensive so paying a premium for it seems appropriate.
If they're using RAM like that, they're pouring money down the drain. RAM speed matters, but 8GB is such little RAM that most users will experience paging from just using their web browser. It's kind of like those guys that put modified exhausts and spoilers on a 2001 Honda Civic.
Great deal. How much did it cost to get it stacked on the package?
Everyone was crying out for this a few years ago from AMD, give us an APU with HBM or something! But because it’s from the Fruit Brand they now have to invent reasons to hate it.
It's called an iPad and it already has an M1. My son and all his friends almost exclusively game on iPads. So the next generation will be more used to touch screens then game controllers
You're kidding, right? Nintendo Switch has sold about 130 million units, over 6 years. Apple ships about 60 million iPads per year, for all use cases, but from 2017-2019 it was hovering around 45 million. 2018 was a really bad year at about 33 million.
So, we're currently at about 283 million iPads sold since the Switch launch, missing 2023 - so maybe more like 310-320 million, for all uses cases which go far beyond gaming. 130 million Nintendo Switches. Pretty reasonable to say they are pretty even.
Except, of course, they aren't even in the high-quality, paid games market where the revenue on iOS is a joke. How many games does iOS have that are paid, don't have IAPs, timers, or Loot Boxes? How many support local multiplayer on the same device? Switch has got hundreds, if not thousands; iOS has... name five.
Purely anecdotal, but Minecraft alone takes more of my kids' friends' gaming time than all Switch games combined. "Local multiplayer on the same device" - well, that isn't how the kids play. They all bring their ipads.
I think it's confusing to look at yearly sales because so many of the children already have ipads. You don't need a very new ipad to run Minecraft.
Apple Arcade raises the bar significantly on mobile, but it pales in comparison to the first party offerings for any dedicated game console. It's got a lot of good indie games, but is missing anything comparable to flagship console-selling titles like Zelda, or Starfield, or Spider-Man. Even portable devices from previous console generations had more compelling libraries in many regards.
It’s called Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Btw, if you didn’t know, Apple Arcade’s subscriber count dwarfs everyone else’s. Go walk around outside and evaluate what device your average kid is using. I promise, most of the kids are using some hand me down iPhone and playing mobile games, if not from Apple Arcade. It doesn’t matter if apple doesn’t have Zelda, only adults know what that is - what apple is doing is controlling the mind share of kids
The criteria given was “How many games does iOS have that are paid, don't have IAPs, timers, or Loot Boxes?” and not your subjective evaluation of how good the games are.
Not that I’m a huge mobile gamer but they do have some good stuff. The developer of Hot Shots Golf has a game that’s basically HSG in all but name which is nice.
Well sure, that's about the only place, if you don't mind the subscription.
The flip side though is that so many Apple Arcade titles are also available on Switch. Even ones that Apple showed in their presentations. You can also actually buy them without a subscription.
They’re adding a ton of stuff all the time. I’m not saying that traditional game consoles won’t continue to be around but isn’t mobile already larger both in terms of players and revenue? We’re artificially handicapping the numbers by considering only tablets and not smart phones in this comparison.
The switch and the Steam Deck are effectively a tablet hybrid form factor (both are portable and have touch screens), just with the controller integrated or come packaged standard. Docking stations are something tablets handle fine too, Switch and Steam Deck just have that mode of operation as a forethought.
All that to say, you can argue consoles in some cases are moving more in the direction of tablets and phones to capture that wider market.
That they feel the need to do that and that you can no longer really have a handheld game system with its own dedicated library of games (something else those both have in common) doesn’t really suggest the idea that mobile gaming is nipping at the heels of traditional gaming is wrong.
Even Nintendo's own offerings show that purchasing is on the way out.
The a la carte virtual console has given way for paid subscription access to curated collections of games. You can't buy retro games on the switch the way you could on the Wii and Wii U.
Game Pass also seems like the first step down this road for a more “core audience” and Sony has one foot in and one foot out with their PS+ strategy, while we’re at it.
That's exactly why I bought a Nintendo Switch and not an iPad, and the reason why I'm excited about the Switch 2 (and I'm not alone in my circle, including the youngest generation)
Touch screens may be more popular (by number of users), but they certainly have a more narrow range of gaming experiences that they enable without causing excessive frustration. Gamepads have much better affordances, and IMO are more suitable for things past casual tap and scroll titles.
I figured Game Porting Toolkit was more aimed at the Vision Pro and Vision Air (I'm guessing this is what the cheaper version is going to be called). Immersive experiences are going to be a big part of selling the Vision Pro, and the gaming industry is now bigger than the music and movie industry combined and only growing. People are going to want one headset that does everything because not a lot of people have the money to drop on a Vision Pro + Oculus or Vive.
Not a lot of useful insight in this article, but it does make me want to remind all of you that if you want MacBook Air, especially the 15” version, consider the 14” MacBook Pro.
The price gap looks big, but it’s actually not.
If you consider the upgrade to 16GB or RAM and 512GB of storage, you’re already at $1500 for the 13” model or $1700 for the 15” model.
$1999 gets you the 14” MacBook Pro with 16GB/512GB standard, where you a get better screen, microphone, speakers, processor, graphics, thermal performance, I/O including HDMI port and dual external screen support.
You sacrifice a little weight and thickness but not much else, and the difference in a backpack (especially with the 15” Air) is minimal.
And here’s the other thing: you can just pick up the M1 14” MacBook Pro and essentially have a better machine in every way at a very similar cost to the base price of the M2 Air models.
You can’t really do that in the same way with the M1 Air because you’re sacrificing the newer superior form factor to get a system with a really ancient design, large bezels, and bad webcam, while the M1 MacBook Pro compared to the M2 is a nearly identical system with almost all of the same advantages.
The 8GB/256GB models of the MacBook Air are a price anchor more than a practical model, because I think that the majority of buyers should upgrade at least one of those specs if not both regardless of how light their usage is.
the 14" pro is so much better. The on board speakers are so much better and the ports on both sides is obviously so much more convenient. The con is the weight but it's a fair tradeoff if you spend most of your time working at a desk and not just surfing on the sofa.
the big problem with the 8/256 is not that it's useless, it's that it's the primary model retailers like costco, bestbuy, etc purchse. So you end up with these great sales on useless computers. I'm sure some clueless people buy them and suffer from that but I can't recommend them to anybody. The price ends up being double the 8/256 price once the sales occur. 8/256 for $800 or 900 vs 16/512/or 1TB for 1600+ infuriating.
That's funny, the only two electronics deals I routinely follow are Costco's Macs and Chromebooks. Their $799 M1 Air is still a steal, and the M1 Mac Mini for $299 was unbeatable for the moment it lasted ($499 for the M2 Mini is pretty great, as well).
$1200 for an 8GB M2 Air, though... It's a bit steep in comparison, but on it's own, it's really a 13" MBP inside... And if it's practically a Pro, why not just get the 14" for $1600?
I think their final lineup of sickly Intel Macs really distorted things with the operations-centric "come get your ports, lol" pricing. Those are awful machines, and setting the expectation that a device's capability should be related to its display size was such a thinly veiled intelligence test. Between barely refreshing their hardware over a decade (the trashcan Pro was X79-based) and Batterygate, it wasn't their brightest era.
To me, it seems like the best feature Apple could offer on a Macbook is a 2-in-1 form factor, with a touch screen and an iPad mode.
I refuse on principal to carry an iPad and a macbook, since its basically the same hardware, and iOS apps should run on Macbooks (and do, if the developer hasn't outright blocked them, which sadly most do).
You might only ("only") get ~7 years of OS updates. A bit of a shame if the hardware is still OK. My 2016 model is abandoned for macOS Ventura and will probably only get macOS security patches through next year. I'd probably pay extra for a macOS LTS that actually had 10 years of support. ;-)
I expect a lot of machines will be orphaned when macOS switches to ARM-only.
It sucks, but it is also good. I can pick up an intel mac mini for cheaper and cheaper and they make good little local area servers as long as you don't require them to be as fast as apple silicon.
I have a 2009 with NetBSD 9.3 and recently got a 2011 for under 50 that I installed DragonflyBSD. I use them primarily for ports development. They are not super fast, but good enough to build most packages in a reasonable time to ensure I've got the buildsheet/makefiles correct.
Not a mini. But I've also got an iBook G4 that runs OpenBSD.
I've got the M2 Air with 8GB and the only time I've noticed any form of lag is when I've got a K8s cluster running locally with loads of containers. Looking back, the 16GB would have been nice, but it's hardly common that I will put the device under such load.
"The company also says its power management update – introduced in 2017 to manage demands on older batteries or with a low level of charge – only reduced an iPhone 6's performance by an average of 10%."
They must have made like 90% of the models they sent out to retailers 256gb/8gb. This is frankly ridiculous as it's not a model I can recommend even on sale. I know they have their reasons, icloud, etc. but what a bad situation it creates for the consumer.
I wonder if Apple have the ability to unlock storage that they secretly left on the chip and just had disabled in order to sell lower tier models? And more flexibly repurpose them to higher storage if that's selling better?
I'm guessing not (it's already wrapped in the box) and I imagine it can't be accessed by software alone. Like, blown fuses.
My extended family has 5 M1 Air (base model) laptops and they're absolutely great and are way more powerful than they need. I only hear the occasional compliment, and no complaints.
The storage is expandable externally, and the RAM is actually quite usable even on heavy loads.
I have tried a variety of methods of expanding the storage. I bought an M1 system with this very thought.
None of the USB storage devices I tried worked well. MacOS drops every device I tried periodically. Sometimes it would go as long as a week, but I'd have to yank it and plug it back in for it to continue to work. Very unreliable for a permanent storage augmentation.
NFS doesn't work, MacOS issues. Samba has been the most reliable network storage drive method, but it tends to be slow on my middling servers - and I really tried to optimize it.
If you really want to do this, I suggest trying the thunderbolt route.
I really don't get your struggles. I bought a crucial 1TB external TB4 SSD - the speeds over TB are fantastic and it's extremely small and reasonably fast (about half the throughput of the builtin drive). Most of my video processing is on this drive, but other than that 256GB is completely usable.
the m1 is plenty powerful. not doubting that. my issue is the storage.
the storage is not expandable actually. 256 is pathetic unless you only have cloud based workflows (which is what apple wants obvious for that reoccuring revenue).
I think my point was that the commenter above mine complained that Apple pre-produced 90% of the base model. Fact is, 90% of people don't need any more than 256GB local storage or 8GB ram, so I think the distribution ratio is fine.
same manufacturer issue there too lol. like the toyota highlander and toyota sienna share the same factory but you can't find a sienna anywhere and a highlander can be found at dealers.
I don't really get this article at all. The M2 Air is a good, solid machine. Apple should be in the business of making good, solid machines. It doesn't matter how good this year's M3 Air is; I'm not going to buy it, because my year old M2 Air is great. In 5 or 6 years (or more) when I'm looking to replace my M2 Air with a M7 or M8 Air, hopefully that'll be a good, solid machine, too.
The 3nm chips in the M3 are rumoured to bring about a 30% improvement in power efficiency. If I wasn't moving towards using an Android for everything, I would definitely think about selling my M1 for that sort of improved battery life.
So I’m about to start some long term travelling so I’ve been looking to shrink down my setup as small as possible. The plan is to use some Viture AR glasses for the monitor, a ProtoArc folding keyboard, a Swiftpoint Propoint mouse and then either a Pixel 8 (my first choice if it’s got the rumoured desktop mode) or a Samsung Galaxy S22 with Dex, which will be housed in a QuadLock MAG case which allows you to swap magnetic battery packs on and off really easily. I can then keep the phone in my pocket or a bag with the AR glasses attached and then the peripherals connected over Bluetooth. I personally think this is going to be the best way of doing it because if you have a usb hub connected to the phone for a powerbank or accessories the cables start becoming a mess on your desk, especially as you’ve got one cable that moves about when you do. Depending on where I work I may end up getting a wireless external portable monitor like the Asus Zenscreen Go so I can take meetings because the phone screen might be a bit small and if I’m wearing glasses people might find it a bit jarring. I’d be using the phone as the webcam and get it to eye level using the Quadlock tripod. Another option would be to use a Samsung Galaxy Fold, but they’re crazy expensive and they also have some durability issues so I’m not keen. You also lose the advantage of the being able to use a quadlock and the swappable battery packs.
On the software side of things, I’m going to do all my dev work in containers via Codespaces/CodeCatalyst. Apparently someone has made a native android version of vscode now, if not there is the browser version. For gaming, I can use an 8bitdo SN30 Pro/razor kishi and Nvidia GeForce Now which in addition to the standard streaming library allows you to play games you’ve already purchased on Steam. I’m opting for taking two 8bitdos as well as a usb-c to hdmi cable in case I make any friends on the go I have a portable 2 player gaming setup that doesn’t take up much more space than a sunglasses case. If that doesn’t end up happening after a year or so I’ll ditch the 8bitdos and the cable and get a kishi for more convenient solo gaming. I was originally going to do this entire setup with a Steam Deck instead of an android but found it awkward to pack and it’s also not available worldwide so if something happened to my machine in say Australia, I wouldn’t easily be able to get another one without waiting a while and paying through the nose.
If there’s any specialist software I want to use, I’ll spin up a cloud instance for it using AWS/Azure, there’s a few options for this now:
- AWS workspaces and Azure Virtual Desktop if you want a GUI desktop experience in the browser.
- AWS Appstream and Azure RemoteApp if you want to stream just a single application.
- EC2 and Azure VMs if you’re no bothered about a GUI or you want to roll everything yourself.
I don’t expect to have to do this often as I reckon I can get by on mainly android apps. I use Obsidian for notes, there’s Adobe Premiere Rush for video editing etc.
If you want more examples, head over to the Samsung Dex subreddit. There’s quite a few people on there who have ditched their computers and have been using Dex for the last year.
>Notably, I've loved using Microsoft Surface laptops – their keyboards are awesome, in my humble opinion
They have the same keyboard as the MBA / MBP 2015. The old Apple Scissors keyboard. Unfortunately Apple wanted every one to get used to typing like on iPad Screen they slim down the key distance to ridiculous level aka Butterfly. The new Magic keyboard is no where as good as scissors.
>So where does Apple go next?
Better Built in Camera although I am not sure how that is possible given how slim the lid is, and if they move to OLED for power efficiency it will be even slimmer.
Intergated 5G Modem. Apple should have a 4G/5G only modem ( Not even 3G ) on MacBook to test out all quirks before it is even used on iPhone.
And then a 3nm / 2nm M Series that is just more efficient.
I mean these small but important iteration are enough for all the way till 2030. The form factor and power level itself has reached the end of the S curve.
Note: I am still on my MBP 2015. So that is coming close to 10 years of using it. The last real improvement I see was the M1. But I hate the keyboard so much those improvement dont compare. Hopefully I could use this for another 3-5 years.
> Intergated 5G Modem. Apple should have a 4G/5G only modem ( Not even 3G ) on MacBook to test out all quirks before it is even used on iPhone.
Please no, in any laptop. Mobile networks evolve faster than the computing hardware, and 5G (as well as 3G and 4G) is somewhat meaningless as 3G/4G/5G operate on different bands on different frequencies in different countries which means laptops will become region locked again.
Over the last 12 years, laptop mobile modems have morphed from ugly PCMCIA extension cards through USB dongles through to portable WiFi enabled mobile devices (MiFi devices), 3G has seen a nearly full demise, 4G is nearing one whereas the laptop from 12 years ago can still work irrespective of the mobile network evolution.
The MiFi devices seems to be the sweet spot as they decouple the laptop from the mobile network technology, are cheaper and easier to upgrade and also come with an added benefit of allowing multiple devices to connect to the mobile network which results in a better mobile network capacity utilisation as opoposed to each device requiring a separate capacity slot.
1. 4G/5G share 90% of same spectrum in all regions. Region locking and specific spectrum usage was only a thing in 2G/3G era.
2. 5G will last for another 10-15 years as it is not even fully rolled out. That is long enough for a Laptop to get supported. The extreme speed transition of 3G-4G to 5G was because of Smartphone revolution. We are ( arguably ) at peak Smartphone already.
1. Mobile networks do not operate across the entire spectrum, they operate on frequency bands. The bands are country and mobile operator specific. Then there is the modulation which might vary across each frequency band and can be can frequency division based (for rural areas with a low network capacity but a longer range) or time division based (a shorter range but a higher capacity).
On top of that, there is the channel bandwidth that also varies depending on the spectrum channel utilisation. In some areas (or countries), the channel might already be utilised for something else, for example a national train network communication system or by military. Such spectrum channels can't be reallocated, so usually new, country specific, channels are allocated. A capable, laptop integrated modem would have to support them all.
Some regional mobile operators have also extended their networks with non-standard frequencies that are locally important but are not supported outside the home turf (Australia's Telstra and Scandinavian mobile operators are prime examples. Telstra even has its own research division, and they have extended the spectrum with non-standard frequencies more than once. They have also licenced their technology to mobile operators overseas on a small scale, e.g. Hong Kong's CSL and to others). You can check the actual spectrum allocation for 4G and 5G at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands, respectively. It varies from 410MHz to 5.9GHz for 4G and from 600MHz to 71GHz (!) for 5G NR with most 5G frequencies being upward of 2.6GHz – to avoid the interference with 4G.
Most importantly, though, the radio wave interference plays the fundamental role. Whilst 4G and 5G might share parts of the spectrum on the paper (which varies wildly for each), they can't share the same channel at once even if the modulation is different. It is not possible to go against the laws of physics and magically have two different standards to share the same radio frequency. Electromagnetic waves will interfere when the channel utilisation goes up.
Then there is the supply problem. There is exactly one commercial 5G modem vendor in the entire world. It is Qualcomm. And their modems are not known neither for the power efficiency nor for the low heat dissipation – they are both, power hungry and run stinking hot, when in use.
2. That remains to be seen. 6G is already under development and is undergoing the early testing. It is too far away from a world wide deployment, but it will be in the terahertz spectrum == incompatibility with existing technologies.
The "MiFi" is one more thing you need to keep charged and have to put up with shitty firmware.
Region locking isn't a big concern - as far as I know no iPhones are region-locked (the appropriate one might perform better in certain areas, but nobody is outright locking you out?), and Macbooks are already region-specific anyway based on keyboard layouts.
You do not have to agree, you have to experience it firsthand. I travel on a frequent basis and still run into occasional problems. 6GHz frequency bands on 5G are still not supported outside the US, for example.
Granted, 5G is the best we have had so far, 4G was worse, and 3G was even worse. 2G effectively did not exist outside Europe and most Asia, for the US had incompatible TDMA and CDMA networks and only got 2G on a largely unsupported 1.9GHz frequency with exactly one mobile operator, which only the Motorola and a few other handsets could use. To travel to South Korea, one had to acquire a CDMA handset, for the country did not have 2G GSM networks.
I am not claiming that MiFi is a perfect solution. It is a solid compromise, though. I am also aware of the firmware problems (my current 5G MiFi device does not even properly support WPA3), but I can live with that for now and will replace the device at a smaller cost compared to a laptop replacement cost. I am okay with that.
They use the new magic keyboard and that is what I said in the post. The magic keyboard is still not the same as the old scissors keyboard. Magic Keyboard has a key travel of 1mm, while old scissors has 1.3mm.
> The first is the extra graphics power of the M2 chip in the 13-inch MacBook Air – providing you go for the 10-core GPU only available in the 512GB model.
> Despite being a laptop that's light enough to pick up with two fingers, the MacBook Air M2 can run the likes of Total War: Warhammer 3, a game that can make my slightly long-in-the-tooth gaming PC splutter.
The article hits a nail on the head here, but this feels more like a broader industry problem. "Where do we go next" is also the current problem that AMD and Nvidia are both facing too. If Intel wasn't working on improving their fabs and services, they'd probably be in the same boat.
We now have so much compute power on-the-go that we struggle to use it all properly. It's a good problem to have! For my money, the "final frontier" is more capable software.
Or bringing back functionally integrated hardware and ports. I just got a Bambu X1C, and all I need to do is print eDP display mounts to finish* my OTG "cyberdeck" mITX build. Once I scale it down, I'll have something I could only have gotten if I'd bought a 96GB M2 Max with no battery for just 90% of the price!
> One obvious - and genuinely exciting - upgrade would be to give the MacBook Air a touch screen.
Really? A touch screen on a laptop just seems like a feature no user ever asked for. It makes sense that devices like tablets and phones have touch’s screens. It’s how the evolved. But laptops have keyboards - why do they need a feature of touch devices?
I was skeptical when decided to go for an MBA M2 but right now I’m absolutely love it. Being able to just pick the laptop up, walk elsewhere because of it’s extremely lightweight. Charge once every night at home and don’t have to worry about battery at all.
Note: I have a beefy server for compiling and AI training so the laptop is just a remote controller.
Come to think of it, my Apple Watch is about five years old and still does everything I need.
Apple is transitioning to a partially services company, which is a good move. Apple gets about $45/month from my family.
EDIT: I also usually get at least four years service from Mac laptops, and even longer for two really old ones that run Linux.